1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for producing ready-to-prepare molded food items from individual pieces of vegetables, including rice or potatoes, fruit, meat, poultry, game, fish or seafood, pasta, pastry or a combination of some or all of these ingredients.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known from fish, meat or poultry processing to process frozen pieces of the foodstuff in order to form a molded end product. Such a method is described for example in WO 97/10717. In said document, pieces of meat which are already in the subsequently desired shape are formed from a slab-type material under the effect of pressure.
It is known from EP 0 168 909 to produce a frozen block of vegetables or fruits via a shaping method. In this method, frozen products are processed in order to produce therefrom firstly blocks and subsequently individual portions of a foodstuff. The main use of this method is for example to produce portioned pieces of spinach, which can then be removed from the packaging on a portion-by-portion basis. After thawing these portion pieces, the product is then prepared in the conventional manner, wherein the bonding that took place during the freezing operation is dissolved as a result of the preparation process and the product breaks down into a ready-to-eat food item.
The disadvantage of this method is that the use is restricted to foodstuffs which break down into individual parts as a result of the preparation process after thawing of the intermediate product.
In addition to this method, other methods are known for producing potato products from mashed potatoes. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,276,314 discloses a method for producing so-called hash-brown potatoes, in which mashed potato products are brought into the desired product shape prior to deep-freezing and then are frozen. After being thawed again, these products are then fried and prepared to make them ready to eat. This method is not suitable for producing products which are molded only by the actual shaping process, but rather the method requires an additional external bond or a frying process which is able to quickly produce an outer shell of suitable strength in order thus to avoid disintegration of the product. The entire contents of U.S. Pat. No. 4,267,314 are incorporated herein by reference.